Bullet review:154g Hornady Interbond

While hunting in Kansas this year, my step brother shot a 250lb 8 point white tail at 300 yards with a Rem 700 LSS in 7Mag. He was shooting a Hornady 154g Interbond bonded core bullet. The deer was facing-quartering to him. He hit the deer in the right front shouler, splintering it, and the bullet broke a rib on the off side and lodged underneath the skin. The deer dropped right in it's tracks.

The 154g Interbond was a perfect mushroom at 0.720 and the jacket had peeled back to within .400 of the base of the bullet. The bullet weighed 114g of it's origional 154g giving it about 75% weight retention, not bad considering the poly tip may weigh 5g or so at least.

I have recovered bullets shot with the same load on smaller deer here in SC with the 154g Hornady regular SP and they weigh in the neighborhood of 75-85g when recovered.

I cleaned the deer, and the damage was massive as you could well imagine with the bullet mushrooming to .720. The load that he is shooting is 75.0g of R#25, Rem case, WLRM primer, bullet seated to touch lands. This load groups 1 1/2-2" at 400 yards using a 4x-16x scope. At 75* this load is 3250 fps in this gun, and in 5 other 7 Mags we shoot 73g-74g of R#25 with similar results.

The mushooming capability and weight retention of this bullet is impressive on this big deer at that range. This bullet should do very well out to 600 yards if not further.

I have used the smaller 139 7 cal interbond out of a 7 rm at under 3200; have shot some goats at ranges between 350-500 yds. and never recovered a bullet. Exit holes were not too big and my impression is that in smaller animals and not hitting bone, expansion is less in my experience.

This is the remains of a 7mm 154gr SST. Used it from a custom Savage Striker 7mm-08. MV is 2500fps and distance was 238yds. Found the jacket at the exit hole. Total penetration was 21" (neck to last rib) and the core made a 3" exit wound. Deer made two bounds and was dead.